Only Yesterday (61 page)
And when Balak heard his voice, an arrogant power over-powered his heart and a tough rind enveloped his body like armor. He turned his head to his tail which rose erect as an arrow. Balak was filled with valor and gnashed his teeth on top of one another, and sank his mouth in the space of the world, to bite the whole world. And yet his spirit weakened at once and the skin of his face began changing, changing, and his heart didn’t let him rest. Balak swayed and knelt, sometimes on his hind legs and sometimes on his forelegs and his heart fluttered and pounded vigorously inside him. And he too dreaded and feared, and his teeth, which just recently were
gnashing in valor, were chattering against one another, like those cowards that Homer, the master of the Gentile poets, condemned in his poems. On top of that, his tail became flaccid, and every single hair sat in its spring as if the spring dried up and the hair dried up. On top of that, the fear. Not that fear that Homer praises in his he-roes, which accompanies them wherever they go, and it terrifies even brave men until they flee from it, but that fear that imposes dread on itself. Sometimes his eyes were enveloped in awful sadness, sometimes his eyes became empty, sometimes his heart was crushed, sometimes his heart was mashed, as if someone had brought a wooden or stone pestle there and crushed and mashed and mashed and crushed.
Balak stood dejected, his tail drooping, until he stole down from the cliff. He lay down wherever he lay down and closed his eyes to sleep. But his eyes jolted open by themselves. His sleep was jolted and fled. And when sleep returned to him, it didn’t bring him rest, but on the contrary, brought weariness on top of weariness with it. And when he shook himself awake, he found himself much more fa-tigued than he was at first. Because of the bad dreams and because of the bad thoughts that had mated with him in his sleep. He waved his leg to shoo them away, like flies you shoo away but they weren’t to be shooed. He opened his mouth to swallow them. But his tongue dropped and was about to fall out of his mouth. Now, even if a per-son threw him some bread, he didn’t have the strength to shut his mouth.
In those days, his nose began to dry up like a shard, and some harsh and turbid warmth emanated from his muzzle and returned there. And his nails shuddered from his blunted paws, as if his whole being was gathered in them. But his mouth was weak and his tongue was hanging down. If he wanted to put his tongue back into his mouth, he confused it with his tail and put his tail between his legs. He turned his head around and searched for his tail and didn’t find it, because it was lying between his legs. And since the body is composed of a head and a tail, it’s easy to understand Balak’s grief when he turned his head around to his tail and didn’t find it.
Leaves the Dog and Returns to Isaac
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Whole in body and whole in spirit, Isaac returned to the Holy City. His soul, heavy when he left, was light when he returned. Sonya didn’t complain about him and Rabinovitch didn’t mention his transgression. On the contrary, he made him a partner in work and livelihood. Now all he had to do was go to Shifra’s mother and ask her for her daughter’s hand. The days Isaac had spent in Jaffa had expanded him, and he didn’t see that he was an artisan and she was the daughter of important people, that he was from Galicia and she was from Hungary. Reb Fayesh’s illness and the assistance Isaac had provided for Shifra and Rebecca also helped bring down the barriers. Even in the bad days, Isaac didn’t despair, and now that his mood was good and his heart was open, there was even less reason.
The bare mountains roll and run with the train and sublime clouds are attached to them. And olive-green cliffs and rocks are sus-pended between the mountains and tend to fall but don’t. And wild goats leap from cliff to cliff and from rock to rock, some raise their horns and look amazed, and with others, bunches of dirt roll away beneath their hooves and they don’t make a sound. And a breeze goes among the mountains and refreshes a person’s bones. Just this morning, deserts of sand were stumbling at your feet and the sea was roar-ing in front of you as far as the eye could see, and now solid mountains of the earth are on your right, and on your left a strip of blue is stretched above the mountains and a still small voice rises, and the mountains develop in silence, rise and fall, fall and rise, and the wheels of the train rattle below, and a big bird soars above and disappears in the blue of the sky or in the smoke rising from the train.
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And the train winds and goes from valley to dale and from dale to mountain on the way to Jerusalem. Before the day is over, he will ar-rive in Jerusalem and will go to Shifra. If she has prepared her mother’s heart, fine, and if not, he has his own mouth.
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Isaac’s train was full of Jerusalemites who went down to Jaffa to bathe in the sea. The change of place and bathing in the sea gave them tanned faces, refreshed spirits, and control over their limbs. They sat comfortably, this one on a pillow and that one on a quilt, with a bas-ket of food at the feet of every single one, and this one looked at his expanding belly and that one at his neighbor’s full face. They felt good and started joking about that custom of changing air and bathing in the sea, which is simply a stupid custom the doctors introduced, for after the doctors try all remedies and don’t find a cure, they send the patients to Jaffa and order them to do this and that, so that afterward they will have an excuse to say, You certainly didn’t fol-low our orders, and they start tormenting them with medications all over again. For if it’s air, Jerusalem is the holiest of all places, and it stands to reason that her air is better than the air of Jaffa. And if it’s the sea, if we were worthy, the sea of Solomon would exist, and when they mentioned the sea, they started explicating the sea that Solomon made and the seven seas that surround the Land of Israel, and why are the waters of the sea better for the body? Because the planets have no control over the sea, only the Holy-One-Blessed-Be- He does Himself, and it is His wont, as it were, to be good to His creatures, especially the Children of Israel. There is a special closeness between the sea and the Children of Israel, for the sea gives salt which they take for sacrifices, and He remembers the Children of Is-rael for the sacrifices they sacrificed on the altar. And when they praised the sea, they mentioned creatures in the sea that aren’t de-filed, for the First Adam didn’t give them names. Hence we don’t find names of fish anywhere in the Torah. And when they mentioned fish, they praised them, for even if they have no personal providence and have no astrological sign as man does, they fulfill their obligation to
fate and the obligation to providence through man, for sometimes fish is prepared for him in honor of the Sabbath, in accordance with the person’s astrological sign and personal providence, for the Sabbath is the mating season of the scholars and Leviathan is in charge of the lust for copulation, as Rashi explains in his commentary on Job, who are ready to raise up their mourning. And that is the reason why the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He castrated the male and killed the female preserving it in salt for the righteous in the world to come. And when they mentioned Leviathan, they mentioned his power and his valor, when he is thirsty he makes numerous furrows in the sea. The deep does not return to its strength until seventy years, and nevertheless it was created only for man, as the MaHaRSHA wrote in the Tractate Babba Batra. That goodness in the World-to-Come did not make them forget the goodness of Jaffa, where living is fine and food is plentiful. And when they remembered Jaffa, they sighed, for living in Jaffa makes a person take care of the body, as if it were the essence of man and man is nothing but body. In fact a person does need a body to maintain the soul, but what is the value of the body and how much do we have to take care of it. It’s enough for the body that it exists for the soul, yet in the end it takes everything at first and enjoys first. Indeed, its hand and its head are the first for the Commandment of Tefillin. And for the Commandment of the Sukkah, who en-ters it first if not the body. And it is first for all Commandments, not to mention eating on the Sabbath and the Commandment to per-form a Commandment.
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Another group that isn’t so learned in the Torah tell about this Jaffa, for their forefathers told them that when they came to the Land of Is-rael, there was nothing in Jaffa but a mere Minyan, and even a few years afterward, when people from Jerusalem came down and established a settlement there, they wanted to make a Talmud society, but there wasn’t a complete Talmud in the whole city, just one tractate here and another tractate there. Now Jaffa is full of synagogues and study houses, and you don’t have one single study house that doesn’t
have several Talmuds and several Minyans. And Jaffa now regards it-self as one of the cities of the Land of Israel and wants a portion of the Distribution. And two preachers are already fighting and delivering slanderous sermons against one another. And even about the Rabbi there’s a Quarrel, for some tend to follow the son of the de-ceased Rabbi and help him assume authority. And when they came to the Rabbi of Jaffa, they praised him, for aside from his great expertise in overt and mysterious knowledge, he truly sacrifices himself for every single son of Israel.
Someone groaned, What difference does it make to us if he’s a genius and a saint, if shops are open there on the Sabbath and he sees and keeps silent. Someone else groaned, On the contrary, he does well not to do anything, for if you act, you ruin things. Last year, the Rabbi wanted to expel one of the whorehouse owners from Jaffa. Not only did he not succeed in expelling him, but that filth joined other sinners like him and they brought a trouble-maker and made him Rabbi, and the breach grew wider and wider, and the city was torn into several sections and every section expanded.
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As some tell of Jaffa and its quarrels, others began lauding Jerusalem and Rabbi Samuel, who knows how to lead his community wisely, and knows what is in the heart of every single person in Jerusalem. How far? Once upon a time, they came and told Rabbi Samuel that they saw a Jew lying dead on the road to Jericho and already rotting and worms were swarming over his body. Rabbi Samuel ordered them to hurry and bring him to the city to be buried in a Jewish grave, so that the issue wouldn’t be known to the government, for that year there was a fear of plague. That day was the Sabbath eve and by the time they brought him, the sun had gone down and they buried him in the dark. At night, Rabbi Samuel called Rabbi Haim and told him the whole deed. Rabbi Samuel asked Rabbi Haim, What should I have done? Said Rabbi Haim, You taught well, Rabbi Samuel. In the morning, all the Hungarians made a turmoil and shouted, as if Rabbi Samuel had ordered to profane the Sabbath, for they could have bribed the government officials with Bakshish. What did the Hungarians care if Jerusalem spent five hundred Napoleons? At that mo-ment, Rabbi Haim wasn’t in the study house. When he came they told him the issue. Said Rabbi Haim, Rabbi Samuel did well. The Quarrel subsided immediately. For Rabbi Samuel is a wise man, who knew that the Hungarians would disagree with him, but they wouldn’t disagree with their own Rabbi, and he anticipated them and called Rabbi Haim.
On the train was one man who, with his father and his fa-ther’s father, as well as his son and his son’s son had known Rabbi Samuel. He waved his hand dismissively and said, I’ll tell you all something and you’ll understand how far Rabbi Samuel’s wisdom reached. Someone else interrupted him and said, We know what you want to tell. But I’ll tell you something you never heard in your life. Before he could tell, someone else interrupted. Before he could tell, someone else interrupted and told.
Every day before the afternoon prayer, Rabbi Samuel would go out to stroll in the courtyard of the Hurbah Synagogue. In those days, the hospice was still there, and the whole courtyard was full of male and female beggars of Jerusalem and other places. Some were cooking and frying and some were laundering their garments. Some were chatting and some were bickering. Once a question about a wife deserted Outside the Land came before Rabbi Samuel, he found the issue very difficult and didn’t find any grounds for leniency. Before the afternoon prayer, he went to stroll in the courtyard, pondering the question of the deserted wife, and his eyes weren’t yet afflicted. Among the beggars, he saw a man. He recognized in him all the identifying marks of the deserted wife’s husband. He asked him, What’s your name? But the man didn’t tell him. He said to him, Aren’t you so-and-so, son of so-and-so, from the city of such-and-such, who deserted your wife? If you don’t confess the truth, I shall call a policeman and have you locked up, for I have authority from the government. The pauper was about to run away. They caught him and brought him to court and Rabbi Samuel forced him to give his wife a divorce.
The first one who wanted to tell said, I used to visit Rabbi Samuel frequently and I can testify that whoever Rabbi Samuel
talked to, he knew immediately what was in his heart. All Rabbi Samuel had to do was glance at you and immediately all your secrets were revealed to him. And even after he lost the light of his eyes, Heaven Forfend, he recognized every person by his voice. And if a child passed and said, Sabbath greetings, Rabbi, Rabbi Samuel would say to him, Aren’t you the son of the daughter of so-and-so who lives in such-and-such a courtyard, and never did Rabbi Samuel make a mistake.
As some tell of the wisdom of Rabbi Samuel, others told of the genius of the Rabbi of Brisk of blessed memory, who could innovate everything every author had innovated in his writings. Once upon a time, the Rabbi of Brisk found a student poring over a book. He said to him, What’s that in your hand? He said to him, A new book full of marvelous innovations. He said to him, Tell me one thing from the book. He told him. He said, If so, I’ll tell you what that author innovated in this passage of the Talmud and in that prob-lem. And his words conformed to the words of the author.
Someone else started talking, And I’ll tell you something you never heard in your life. Someone else interrupted him and said, And I’ll tell something even you haven’t heard. Another one interrupted him and said, You want to tell him a tale you heard from me. Well, gentlemen, this was the story. Before he got started, someone else jumped into his words and said, I’ll tell you something that will make you sorry you have only two ears. Since everyone knew that if he opened his mouth there was something to hear, everyone pricked up his ears. He started telling, What made the Rabbi of Brisk marry Sonya? This is how it was. After Sonya was divorced from her first husband, all the great men of the state sent to marry her, but she rejected them all. At that time, the Rabbi of Brisk was widowed. One matchmaker, two matchmakers, three matchmakers she sent to him and they couldn’t do anything. She went to him in Brisk. That Rabbi didn’t let her in. She said to his close friends, Go and tell your Rabbi that I have one thing to say to him, and when he hears that thing, he will change his mind immediately. The Rabbi recognized that this wasn’t just idle talk and ordered them to bring her in. She told him, When I was a little child, my grandfather, Rabbi Joseph
Yampola, son-in-law of Yehuda Landau, the author of
The Famous of Yehuda
, was fond of me. Once he sat me on his lap, put both his hands on my head and blessed me that I would marry the genius of the generation. And since the Rabbi of Brisk is the genius of the generation, it is fitting that he should marry me to fulfill the blessing of that Rebbe. The Rabbi of Brisk said to her, I have heard of you that you don’t bear sons. Said she, That doesn’t depend on me. Within a few days, he married her. And when they mentioned the wife of the Rabbi of Brisk, they started telling of her greatness, that in her time, no one raised his head, and even Rabbis and Geniuses were scared of her, not to mention the Rabbi of Brisk, who himself followed the biblical injunction, in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice.As some praise the Rabbi of Brisk, others tell of the greatness of the Rabbi of Lublin, a holy man of God whose face was like an angel of the Lord of Hosts, and he didn’t forget a single thing he learned. And when they would ask him something about the Rabbinic Law, he would open a Talmud and immediately show the an-swer. And never in his life did he have to turn over the page, for he would point to the place and even to the line with his finger. And not only that, but things that other men would struggle over for an hour or two, he would grasp in a wink, quite unnaturally. And once upon a time, people came from Hebron with a question written on several sheets. He looked at it and made some answer. They told him, Our Rabbi hasn’t yet read the whole question and is already answering it. He said to them, So, listen and I’ll tell you everything that is written here, and his words were correct word for word. A small fraction of his genius is seen in his book
Torat Hesed
which he didn’t publish to boast of his learning, but when he saw that his strength was waning and it was hard for him to teach students, he wrote his book, to take the place of studying with students. All his life, he didn’t waste a minute, and at the end of his days, he would recite Mishnahs by heart, for as that Saint said, every Jew should know the Six Orders of Mishnah by heart, for if he dies on the Sabbath and is laid out until the close of the Sabbath when he is buried, what will he do to keep from wasting his time. And clearly the words were meant for himself,for he saw with the holy spirit that he would depart on the Sabbath. That Sabbath when the Rabbi of Lublin passed away was the time of the Greeting of the Sabbath, and all Jerusalem was standing in the synagogues and study houses to greet the Sabbath. Suddenly a roar was heard, as if heaven and earth were stunned. And everyone knew that the Rabbi of Lublin had departed. After the prayer they went to his house but they no longer found him alive.
As some praise the great scholars of the Torah, others sat and told tales of miraculous people of Jerusalem, who weren’t experts in Torah, but who were great Saints, like Reb Noah Hayatt, who was tall and skinny and behaved like a complete ignoramus, and when Rabbi Samuel had difficulties about releasing a deserted wife, he would call him to tell him where the deserter was, and he was always right. Once Rabbi Samuel started teaching him the Torah. Reb Noah pretended he didn’t know what he was talking about. Rabbi Samuel said to him, I know that you know. Said he, I don’t know, I don’t know. Just one thing I do know, I know how to find men who deserted their wives, so as to release the daughters of Israel from the bonds of desertion. Rabbi Samuel said to him, I order you to reveal yourself to me. He said to him, Shut up or I shall order you to do whatever I want. Rabbi Samuel was frightened and fell silent.
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As the Poles and the Lithuanians praised the geniuses of Poland and Lithuania, the Hungarians praised the great men of Hungary. In that train was a stooped, suffering man, who didn’t travel to heal the body, but went to the Rabbi of Jaffa for he needed his judgment because his wife went mad right after the wedding night and the Rabbis of Jerusalem won’t let him divorce her, even though they write a divorce decree for everyone who can pay for the scribe. That man looked with disfavor at those carefree people, everyone sitting on his pillow and his quilt, dressed in fine clothes, his bed made and his table set, while he lives with a madwoman in a humble house with no bed and no table. He clicked his tongue contemptuously at them and their stories. One young Yeshiva student scolded him, Why are
you squeaking at us like a mouse? That man drew himself up to face him and said, If it’s stories you want I’ll tell you stories that will cur-dle the milk in your bellies. And you can tell your father who will excommunicate me as he excommunicated Rabbi Akiva Yosef the au-thor of
A Hebrew Heart
, who had a real Hebrew heart. And when he mentioned Rabbi Akiva Yosef, he started telling how many troubles befell that Saint who wanted to undo the ban of Rabbi Gershom against taking two wives, and when he wanted to make other great repairs, the officers rose up against him and outlawed him. His father-in-law, Rabbi Hillel of Kolomea, heard and wrote to him, When the holy ARI, Isaac Luria of blessed memory, was in Jerusalem, he saw Satan standing with one foot on the holy place and his other foot standing on his house, and the holy ARI Luria was forced to run away from Jerusalem. You run away too. Replied Rabbi Akiva Yosef, I won’t run away. And he still lives in Jerusalem and Satan dances in the city to keep the Children of Israel away from good fortune.And when they mentioned the officers, they mentioned Reb Naftali Haim, who knew the root of the soul of every single officer and the secret of his metamorphosis. When Reb Naftali Haim walked around the marketplace and saw watercarriers bringing waterskins on their donkeys, and poking the donkeys with a spiked stick until they bled, he called every donkey by the name of one of the fa-mous officers who had already departed this world and had been metamorphosed into donkeys, and the donkeys looked pleadingly and imploringly at that Saint. Sometimes he would say to a donkey, So-and-So, son of So-and-So, you already have repair, and the don-key would shake his head at him in thanks and go on his way; and sometimes he would say to a donkey, Many torments are still demanded of you and many woes are in store for you in this world until you find your repair, and the donkey would drop his head and not budge, not even if they poked him, even if he bled.
Once a man came to Reb Naftali Haim to request an amulet for his son who had gone mad, Heaven Forfend. Reb Naftali Haim told him, I don’t write amulets. But I do bless you that your son may recover, and my blessing is enough for you. That man didn’t budge
from him until he was forced to write him an amulet. The man hung it on his son’s neck and the boy’s mind was restored. His neighbors asked to see what names could drive out madness and they opened the amulet. They found written Nissim Bek and Eleazar Shapiro, two officers of Jerusalem. They went to Reb Naftali Haim and told him, What is this? He told them, Even the demons are scared of those people.
Reb Naftali Haim lived on Hebron Street in a small room, and not everyone could come to him, and those who were allowed in his house saw great wonders. In his room were two beds, his and his wife’s, and two small tables, his and his wife’s. On his table not a fly was seen, and his wife’s table was full of flies. Once, one of the people close to him came to his house. He told him, Sit down. He wanted to sit on the bed of the Rabbi’s wife. He told him, Sit on my bed. Not that I am strict about sitting on her bed, but her bed is full of fleas and my bed is clean. And in fact that was so. And no wonder, for everyone who doesn’t flee from his deeds, the fleas have no power over him.
Reb Naftali Haim’s landlord was a wicked Arab, and every day he would aggravate his Jewish tenants. Once, he troubled Reb Naftali Haim very much. Reb Naftali Haim told him, Please go. The Arab got angry and said to him, You tell me to go, I’ll throw you right out of the apartment. And that wicked man didn’t calm down until he locked the cistern to Reb Naftali Haim. Said Rabbi Naftali Haim, I don’t want to fight with you, the water and the cistern will fight with you. The next day, they found the Arab lying dead in the cistern in his courtyard. The entire city was amazed, for the stone opening of the cistern was narrow and that Arab was fat and fleshy.
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